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I personally believe that the earlier tests performed on the shroud were falsified, perhaps deliberately, perhaps inadvertantly. It was known that there were later stains on the parts tested. There is quite a bit of other evidence, such as embedded pollen, that the shroud is much older than that.

This has nothing to do with anyone’s faith. The Catholic Church treats such things, even this perhaps most famous of all relics, as matters of judgement or private believe, and does not require anyone to believe in them.

I happen personally, after having read a good deal of discussion of the evidence, to believe that it is probably real. How else do you explain it—a negative image made long before anyone had ever heard of such things?

Those who insist that it MUST be a fake, on the other hand, and ignore all evidence to the contrary, are more superstitious than those who suspend judgment, IMHO.

You are correct about the pollen--it is a kind of flax (I think) that was prevalent in the Middle East at the time of Jesus.

Around the time of the most recent dating (the date they are now trying to confirm/debunk)--1300 to 1400--there was a fire in the church that was protecting the shroud. The fire damaged some of the shroud. Nuns who were responsible for the shroud repaired it using current year fabric. I believe that the scientists who are interested in correctly dating the shroud think they were given a wrong sample or, at least, not enough samples for testing the entire object.

Those who insist that it MUST be a fake, on the other hand, and ignore all evidence to the contrary, are more superstitious than those who suspend judgment,

I have been following "The Shroud" since the 1960's - long before any testing - and have been corresponding with one of the scientists involved in the 1978 team of scientists - he was very skeptical and figured it wouldn't take much to expose the cloth as a fraud.

Like other scientists going in with the same mind-set, the more he learned, the more he became convinced of it's authentic age.

Carbon dating was only one of many scientific modems used. But since it was also the only one that really seemed to go against the Shroud, it was used as the silver bullet, all other evidence to the contrary, thrown aside/

As an artist, I also follow the trail from an art prospective - and there are too many paintings, most particularly the iconic paintings, that were done hundreds of years before the date given by the carbon-daters...paintings that could only have resulted from the artists looking at the face in the Shroud.

Also, it's pretty well documented that the tiny samples of cloth taken to test were not only contaminated by centuries of existence and handling, but were from the areas that were patched after a monastery fire in the very time period of the carbon dating results.

The nay sayers would still cry 'nay', if Jesus, Himself, walked in and said: "Yes, that is my burial Shroud."

Those who have a vested interest in denying the Shroud and existence of Jesus, of Noah's Ark or any other evidence that points to the truths in the Bible = will fight and deny and falsify and twist any evidence no matter what it is.

It behooves people who want to opine on the Shroud to do an honest study on all the known evidences and studies - and that will involve more than a couple GOOGLE searches.

For someone genuinely interested, however, one might try this following site for a springboard - and get the books by the experts in the different sciences that worked on it.Below: "The Pantocrator"

http://www.shroud.com/library.htm

Early iconic paintings of Jesus -

Compare with the face in the Shroud:

15th cent - long before Leonardo was born,,,

below, Detail of Pantocrator

This painting was done hundreds of years before Leonardo was born...which, from my artist point of view, destroys all the convoluted protestations that Leonardo painted The Shroud... it was crafted during the first half of the 6th century AD. It portrays a premature pictorial version of Jesus, probably the oldest that has survived the ages.

Literally hundreds of these iconic paintings were done for churches and for home sanctuaries...obviously the artists often copied from others - but there are also many that shoe more of the features in the Shroud Face - like 3 wisps of hair falling on the forehead (that were THOUGHT to be hair, but are actually streaks of blood) - the "v" formation between the eyes, and many other things...too much to go into here - but these are my observations =

Those who insist that it MUST be a fake, on the other hand, and ignore all evidence to the contrary, are more superstitious than those who suspend judgment, IMHO.

I seem to recall that the medieval-dated sample did not come from the center panel with the image on it, but from an outer section that appeared to have been added on as a repair (perhaps in medieval times)—which is separated from the center panel by a seam.

If that's the case, the earlier tests were a miracle of scientific stupidity. Hence the do-over.

Many in modern times have trouble imagining that our Christian ancestors were anything but unlettered clods incapable of preserving anything. For instance, secularists sneer at the idea that we could have relics and reliably know about the lives of saints from 1,700 years ago. It's puzzling to them, since we know so much less about the individual pagan Romans. They forget that the pagans cremated their dead, while the Christians and Jews carefully laid theirs in a subterranean labyrinthe containing tombs and personal effects called the Catacombes—a fantastic "library" of ancient Roman life that is still open to study.